Sherri Brown

Sherri Brown has completed a PhD in Political Science at McMaster University. Her doctoral dissertation investigated the growth and roles of private authority in health governance, specifically through the lens of public-private partnerships intended to enhance access to HIV/AIDS medicines in sub-Saharan Africa. Sherri is a co-editor and author of three chapters in the 2010 book, Health for Some: The Political Economy of Global Health. Her research is also published in two chapters in the 2011 Reinventing Chieftaincy in the Age of AIDS, Gender, Governance and Development. This research addressed women's community leadership strategies in HIV prevention and impact mitigation in resource-poor settings in rural Ghana. Sherri has lectured widely on HIV treatment access issues in sub-Saharan Africa and has also been an organizer of community lecture and fundraising events around these issues. Her research interests are in health, political economy and development, particularly the interfaces between globalisation, gender, and health.

Experience as a Trudeau Scholar

The Trudeau Scholarship have served as an invaluable source of financial, intellectual and community support, and has been profoundly integral to my doctoral research and intellectual development over the past four years. I have had the opportunity, through the scholarship, to engage with some of the most fascinating and supportive scholars, practitioners, and politicians who have lent extraordinary support to my project and my professional development. Furthermore, with Foundation support, I travelled to three countries in sub-Saharan Africa, three countries in Europe, and to several states in the USA, to conduct my research and have interviewed nearly a hundred people, and met hundreds more. Some of the strangest, most challenging and most wonderful experiences of my life have come out of these trips. In Lesotho one day I woke at 5 am and interviewed someone from the Ministry of Health and later that afternoon, I was sitting in the one-room house of a grandmother in a remote village and listening to her describe the trials of raising 8 orphaned grandchildren. The research tests you, stretches your limitations, expands your worldview, and connects you to people you would otherwise never know. I can never thank the Foundation enough for giving me these opportunities.